faith

last night, i saw a kid in our neighborhood walking home alone, in the snow, after dark.  i almost felt the need to stop and ask if she would be okay, but then thought that she'd probably freak out if an unrecognized car pulled up next to her.

if i had seen the same thing like 10 years ago, i probably would have thought nothing of it.  now i wonder:  is the world becoming less safe or am i becoming more paranoid?  it's probably alittle of both.

when i was in high school and had just moved to a new town, i made several pen pals and friends via the internet.  after some correspondence, i would eventually meet these people, usually without informing my parents, and not in the most public of places.  thinking back, i could have been hurt by these strangers or worse.  but my naiveté and openness made me very trusting and assuming that the world was a guarded, honest place.

my walls didn't come up until college, after i was old enough to perceive the difference between good and not-so-good but still not discerning enough to end up wounded, and pretty badly at that.  by the time i had graduated, i had managed to build up an entire indestructible stone castle around me, with a moat and all.

since then, little by little, my walls began chipping away, and i have one special person to thank for that.  but even so, whenever we decide to bring a child into this world, i am fairly certain that it will not be the same world i once grew up in.  i would like for my someday-child to be unsuspecting and raw but protected all the while.  i guess the only way to do that is to quit worrying so much, and to trust in others and a higher power that everything will turn out alright.

but it's hard though, isn't it?  in this day and age we are bombarded by news of kidnappings, rapes, murders, and horrifying, violent crimes.  our e-mail inboxes are spammed with threats of identify theft, hackers, and already limited privacy rules being violated.  we can hardly make it through a day without hearing something terrible or sad, so i guess it's not that unreasonable to instinctively distrust our fellow men.  i mean, i would like to give people the benefit of the doubt, if it wasn't for that doubt part.

so i suppose trust -- in oneself, each other, the universe -- is a delicate balance to preserve.

maybe finding this balance is what my parents were trying to convey to me.  when i was little they used to say, "trust me," and i would instantly think, HOW?  they would reply, "you just need to," which i've come to believe means, have alittle faith.